Dell CEO Michael Dell plans to announce a series of new products aimed at making life easier for IT managers.

The announcement of these products is scheduled to happen during a keynote by Dell at the Oracle OpenWorld conference in San Francisco Nov. 14.

"What you're going to hear Michael talk about ... is some real products and services coming down the pipe here very shortly on how we simplify IT for customers of all sizes," said Brad Anderson, senior vice president and general manager of Dell's Business Products Group, during an interview.

Among the products and services that Dell plans to announce are a less expensive and simpler virtualization product, new blade servers for large data centers, and IT support services for small companies that face the same challenges confronted by corporations with large IT departments but don't have the same resources, Anderson said.

The ultimate aim of these products and services is to help reduce the costs companies bear when they purchase new computers or roll out new software applications.

"You've got to think about how customers procure [IT products like a server], how they deploy it, how they manage it on an ongoing basis, how they dynamically reconfigure it for their changing requirements, and maybe how they retire it," Anderson said. "How can we really streamline and simplify each step of that life cycle so the customer invests less of his or her money to go do those things?"

This effort to make lives easier for IT managers will start at the manufacturing level, where Dell is offering customers the ability to have PCs and servers shipped with software applications pre-installed and tested, Anderson said.

The IDG News Service is a Network World affiliate.